She couldn't lie to herself. There was more brewing between her and Taz than a one-night stand. No one had primed them to have such a strong reaction to each other when they'd been dosed with Genie's Wish. Those feelings were already there below the surface, trying to break free. Well, it was all out there in the universe now. She kissed the spot on his chest where she'd yanked on his hair and waited for the silence to get to him. Judging by the fast beat of his heart and the pent-up energy wafting off of him, it wouldn't be long.
A few seconds later he heaved out a sigh. "I learned from experience that sticking your neck out for strangers ends badly."
"Didn't Freddie stick his neck out for you and your brothers?" she asked.
Pain pinched his handsome features, giving him a haunted look. "He's why I can't."
* * * *
Energy fizzed and popped underneath Taz's skin, just like it had in the moments before he stepped into the ring, sending adrenaline flooding through him. The fight or flight response he'd developed during a rough childhood and honed to a steel point as a boxer went into action, eating away the last vestiges of his post-orgasm calm.
Bianca laid her cheek against his chest, her long hair tickling him, but he wouldn't flick it away. Even the uncomfortable felt good with her.
"You know I won't stop pestering you about it until you tell me," she said.
And she wouldn't. Not because she was nosey or gossipy, but because she wanted to help. She wanted to help him. It was a strange feeling to have someone care. His brothers did, but the testosterone code meant no touchy-feely, philosophical chats about feelings. But with Bianca? It seemed as natural as holding her naked body next to his and never letting go.
And because of that, he did the one thing he never did—he started to talk about the night he killed the man who'd been more of a father to him than his own had ever been.
"I had a shot at the championship belt. I was Vegas's odds-on favorite to win, but no one believed I would win more than me. I was young, cocky, and full of myself." The money, the fame, the trophy wife...they'd all been his for the taking. And he'd taken and taken and taken. "Freddie kept on me about being careful, not fucking things up at the last minute. That's what a good trainer does—he builds you up and then keeps you from screwing yourself over because your ego gets out of control."
He'd fought in the light heavyweight division, but his ego would have clocked in above the heavyweight limit. In a way, it had helped him get to the top of the bare knuckles world of professional boxing. Fighters can't get in the ring thinking they're going to lose. Without that I'm-the-best edge, fighters were just newborn kittens strolling into a dogfight.
"The night before the title belt main event in Vegas, I was antsy. Every time I turned around I saw something that made me think of the fight. My brain was on overload. I had to get out of my hotel room. Figuring a few rounds of Blackjack would calm me down, I went to the casino floor."
How many times had he wished he could take that decision back? A million? Probably that much each and every fucking day.
"A few hands in, this asshole and his girlfriend sat down. The girl had no idea what she was doing and kept making mistakes that messed up the cards for the rest of the table. Well, the asshole got snarky, then he got belligerent, and then he got threatening." The dealer had motioned security over, but it was too late. "When he nearly backhanded her at the table, I lost it. All I could think of was hearing my mom's body hit the wall after my dad had tossed her like a rag doll. I'd been too small to help my mom, but I wasn't too small that night at the casino."
He could still hear the crunch of the other man's nose and the hard thud of his unconscious body hitting the ground, still feel the rush of raw power and righteousness that had surged through him as he loomed over the man. He'd wanted the asshole to get up, to try to take a swing if only so he could batter him to the ground again. All the impotent fury from his childhood that he tapped into when he was in the ring had finally found a home outside of it and it felt good. In that moment, he was a protector. Finally.
"Next thing I knew, I was in cuffs with the cop reminding me that as a licensed boxer, my hands were considered lethal weapons. If the guy didn't pull through, I'd be facing a murder charge." Needing something to loosen the remembered panic twisting his spleen, he threaded his hands in Bianca's long hair, letting the silky feel of the strands smooth away the rough edges of fear. "He regained consciousness a little while later. No permanent damage, but he was black and blue and taped up all over. I don't know what the boxing commission did to cover it up, but they did. They probably paid the guy off. All I know was that before the sun was up, I was back in my room with Freddie tearing off strips of my hide. He was so mad his eyes were bulging."
The feel of her smooth hair looping in waves over his fingers wasn't enough to distance him from what had happened next, so he surrendered to it and let the guilt and shame press down on his lungs until breathing started to seem optional. As if sensing his misery, she snuggled in closer and wound one leg around his hip until he was wrapped up in her and his lungs remembered how to operate.
"Like the young punk that I was, I zoned out and started thinking about the fight. I worked my ass off to ignore him right up until the moment Freddie dropped dead in front of me." His throat closed up tight and he ground his teeth together as he tried to block out the image of Freddie's lifeless body so still in the middle of the hotel room floor while chaos erupted around them. His fault. All his fault. "The commission wouldn't let me cancel the fight. Not after everything they'd done to make sure the fight would happen after I'd knocked the asshole out. So I walked into the ring that night and never took a swing."
The fight had still gone six rounds before he went down. However, unlike Freddie, he got up again. He walked away from it all, which led to a quick divorce from a wife who'd loved his lifestyle, not him, and then he had come home to Ft. Worth, where he'd vowed never to make the same mistake again.
Bianca squeezed, giving him a full body hug. "Taz, I'm so sorry, but it wasn't your fault."
"Yes, it was." The need to move, to dodge, to jab surged through him. He tossed off her hold and bounded out of the bed. Balancing his weight on the balls of his feet, he swung his arms in a wide arc as sweat slickened his overheated skin. He needed the heavy bag. He needed twelve rounds inside the ropes. He needed to get the hell away from Bianca and all the ways she made him remember everything he'd fought so fucking hard to forget. "I only wish the punishment had been more severe."
She swung her legs off the bed and sat up, wrapping her arms around herself and rubbing the outside of her arms as if she'd just turned ice cold at the same time the temperature inside the room went to molten lava levels. "I remember that fight. The other guy almost killed you."
A broken nose, probable concussion, cuts, bruises, and an eye that was so swollen even the cut man got woozy. Still, it hadn't been enough. "I was hoping he would. It was what I'd deserved. I'd stuck my neck out for a total stranger and ended up giving a heart attack to the man who'd been more of a father to me than my own."
There it was, the butt-ugly truth of it all laid out as bare as his own ass right now. He'd never told anyone, not even his brothers. Oh, they knew; how could they not? But saying it out loud instead of just knowing it was understood was something totally different. The fact that he'd slit his deepest and most painful scar down to the bone for Bianca said more than he could process at the moment.
&n
bsp; "And do you think refusing to help others is how he would want to be remembered?" she asked, her voice quiet but not soft.
"Considering the way he died?" The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, but the memories had too strong a grip around him to stop now. "Yes, I do."
"Really?" A dark red flush crept up her skin, from the deep V of her cleavage to the high shelf of her cheekbones, and she shot off the bed. She planted her hands on her generous hips and glared at him. "The man who ended up basically adopting a group of kids who had broken into his gym would want to be remembered by you turning your back on the people who need help the most? Those who are going to have their families and neighborhoods ruined by the Genie's Wish? Or Gidget, who is probably being used as a human guinea pig?"
Her words were a hard slap across the face that made his ears ring. How dare she say that? He'd opened up to her, shared his darkest failing, and she'd used it as an opportunity to push her own agenda. She wasn't right. She didn't even know Freddie. He did. He knew the proper way to mourn the man and pay for his own failings.